doublet

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

n. A close-fitting jacket, with or without sleeves, worn by European men between the 15th and 17th centuries.

n. A pair of similar or identical things.

n. A member of such a pair.

n. Physics A multiplet with two members.

n. Linguistics One of two words derived from the same historical source by different routes of transmission, such as skirt from Scandinavian and shirt from English.

n. An imitation gem composed of two parts, as of an inferior stone layered beneath a precious gem.

n. Games A throw of two dice in which the same number of dots appears on the upper face of each.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

n. a man’s close-fitting jacket, with or without sleeves. Men in Europe wore doublets from the 1400s to the 1600s.

n. a pair of two similar or equal things; couple.

n. one of two or more different words in a language derived from the same origin but coming by different routes (e.g., toucher and toquer in French or yard and garden in English).

n. In textual criticism, two different narrative accounts of the same actual event.

n. An imitation gem made of two pieces of glass or crystal with a layer of color between them.

n. A word or phrase set a second time by mistake.

n. A quantum state of a system with a spin of 1/2, such that there are two allowed values of the spin component, -1/2 and +1/2.

n. A word (or rather, a halfword) consisting of two bytes

n. A very small flowering plant, Dimeresia howellii

n. A word ladder puzzle.

n. An arrangement of two lenses for a microscope, designed to correct spherical aberration and chromatic dispersion, thus rendering the image of an object more clear and distinct.

n. Either of two dice, each of which, when thrown, has the same number of spots on the face lying uppermost.

n. A game somewhat like backgammon.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

n. Two of the same kind; a pair; a couple.

n. A word or words unintentionally doubled or set up a second time.

n. A close-fitting garment for men, covering the body from the neck to the waist or a little below. It was worn in Western Europe from the 15th to the 17th century.

n. A counterfeit gem, composed of two pieces of crystal, with a color them, and thus giving the appearance of a naturally colored gem. Also, a piece of paste or glass covered by a veneer of real stone.

n. An arrangement of two lenses for a microscope, designed to correct spherical aberration and chromatic dispersion, thus rendering the image of an object more clear and distinct.

n. Two dice, each of which, when thrown, has the same number of spots on the face lying uppermost.

n. A game somewhat like backgammon.

n. One of two or more words in the same language derived by different courses from the same original from

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

n. One of a pair of like things; a duplicate: in most uses commonly in the plural.

n. Specifically— In typography, an unintentional duplication of a word, phrase, passage, etc. Also double.

n. In philology, a duplicate form of a word; one of two (or, by extension, three or more) words originally the same, but having come to differ in form, and usually more or less in meaning. Doublets are very common in English. They usually consist of an older and a later form, the older being generally descended and the later directly borrowed from the same original (as benison, benediction; malison, malediction, etc.), or two accidental variations of one original, sometimes slightly discriminated (as alarm, alarum, etc.), or of a standard literary and a dialectal form (as church, kirk; lord, laird, etc.). See dimorphism, 5.

n. In heraldry, a chevron-shaped bearing which issues from either side of the field, and reaches nearly to the opposite side without touching it.

n. One of a pair of dice turned up in throwing when they both present the same number of spots: usually in the plural: as, to throw doublets.

n. Something formed by a union of two like things; a duplicate combination.

n. In optics, a combination of two simple lenses, with the object of diminishing the chromatic and spherical aberration: in the former use called specifically an achromatic doublet. The Wollaston doublet (see the extract) consists of two plano-convex lenses placed a short distance apart in the eyepiece of a microscope.

n. plural A game with dice upon tables, somewhat resembling backgammon.

n. An outer body-garment such as was worn by men from about the end of the fifteenth until about the middle of the seventeenth century.

After putting on his crimson satin doublet and his long robe, not forgetting his black silk coif, he took leave of his wife, who was still in bed, and assured her that every evening he would come and sup with her, but that she must not expect him at dinner.

Certain advantages were reserved to the banker: -- if he drew a doublet, that is, two equal cards, he won half of the stakes upon the card which equalled the doublet; if he drew for the players the last card of the pack, he was exempt from doubling the stakes deposited on that card.

"As to our poverty, friend," replied Richie, "that is as Heaven pleases; but touching our falset, I'll prove to you that a Scotsman bears as leal and true a heart to his friend as ever beat in English doublet."

Broadly defined, a doublet is a pair of cognate words, almost always of Latin or Greco-Latin origin, of which one (here always placed second) retains a form close to the source, while the other has diverged by having passed through Old and Middle French and thence into Middle and Modern English -- though French is occasionally by-passed.

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Comments

In lapidary it's a gem with some kind of overlay, ie. two pieces sandwiched together. Clear quartz on top of a piece of opal, for example, can make the opal appear larger and brighter than it actually is.